Difficult experiences

Couple overall thoughts:

1. I can't get today's images out of my head... description below
2. These people NEED contraceptives, there's very little understanding of family planning amongst the poorer Zambian population. (and when I say family planning, I'm partially talking about couples actually sitting down and thinking about how they're going to feed, take care, and educate all their children... and given their resources, figure out how many children they want, and how they should space their births given ... contraceptive/condom use follows after that initial planning...)

... I don't care what other conservative Christians think about contraceptive use or family planning or whatever, but I think it is absolutely horrible to have lots of children without thinking a whit about how you will be able to provide for them. Especially when many of them are born HIV positive or with other diseases/deformities.

... and on a similar note ,there's almost no savings culture. understandable.. usually mothers have so many mouths to feed whastever they get can't be saved.

3. I need to figure out how best to manage/organize the Zambian workers involved in this study. My host family recommended being very firm/strict at first, or else they would immediately take advantage of me. What's a Christian response though?

... on a related topic I feel disturbed by something that happened today.... after walking around all day three of the workers on the project came up to me and said "We're thirsty and hungry. Buy us lunch". With my host family's warnings fresh in my mind, I looked at them and said nothing. (And the nI thought about how I had bought myself a bottle of Coke while I was walking around in the fields all day). And I did nothing. I'm not sure if what I did was wrong/right. There are arguments for both sides. ( i.e. the workers are paid for transportation and lunch, but it's a miserably small amount from my perspective...) But they had probably seen me walking aorund with my bottle of coke that they couldn't afford.

4. regarding the New York Times article I referenced yesterday about child labor in Lusaka... it's sad, but not that sad. after going into the field today I'm really happy for the children who can manage to make money by selling things or helping out with non-dangerous work. At least they're not dying of hunger, like many others are. There's not much exploitation going on, as I see it... it's just a matter of survival.

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Today I went "into the field" for the first time i.e. I went with a Zambian community health worker into the housing compounds surrounding the public health clinic to continue more of the female tracking involved in the experiment. (The government had built cement-block compounds all over the city for the poor/poorest Zambians it seems...) She was a pleasant woman who had been previously trained as a midwife. As we walked around Chaisa, a particularly poor compound, I could barely concentrate on the task at hand (interviewing households for consent to participate in our study)... the combination of the oppressive stench of dirty sewage, the malnourished men and women, the ubiquitous flies, the free-roaming chickens, the meager bottles of soda and fly-covered fruits and vegetables for sale, the tattered clothes with random labeling... all were a bit overwhelming. But what disturbed me the most was seeing the children/babies... SO MANY of them in each housing compound. There were typically 5-8 babies/children running around the compounds, along with a couple women. I rarely saw men in the houses; I mostly saw them walking around aimlessly or working on building muddy cement blocks... 

Some children seemed to be eating dust,... some had deformed limbs .. probably from polio... I saw many 4-5 year old-looking children carrying their baby brother/sisters (or maybe not even?) around... it seems that there were so many children in each household that it was necessary for the older siblings to take care of the younger siblings.

Most of the mothers walked around sullenly, many with a newborn strapped around their body.

I totally stuck out, of course....

The bright-eyed curiosity of the babies and younger children made me even more depressed. I said hello to a lot of the young children and asked them how old they were. They replied shyly. Many of them ran away and hid, and shyly stuck their heads out to look at me. I remember a boy who I thought couldn't have been more than 6 or 7 years old say that he was 13. Most of them were kind of dirty.

The community health worker (CHW) walked slowly, saying hi to people who greeted her, and slowly and politely asked about recent babies. Whenever we found a woman who agreed to participate, we sat down on a simple stool or on the ground as the CHW asked gently and slowly about the birth history of the mother, and whether she was using any contraceptives. (there are many, it seems)

Some women were illiterate and signed the consent forms with a fingerprint.

But throughout it all, the people were very polite and generally friendly. The children waved bakc hello, or smiled shyly when I talked to them. Many children were running aorund and playing. The women were generally cooperative.